


All Nightmares End with the Sun

by ScaryScarecrows



Series: Gaslights [14]
Category: Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018)
Genre: AU for the AU, Fluff, Gen, Jason gets a happy ending, Reunion Fic, Warm Fuzzies, What-If, because screw DC he deserves one, it's fluff and nothing else, maybe a wee bit of angst, mentions of Traumatic Death, oh well, you're in too deep when that's a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-06-22 12:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15582216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScaryScarecrows/pseuds/ScaryScarecrows
Summary: “He’s dead.”The weight of that He sucks the air out of the room, leaving Jason feeling like he’s taken a boot to the chest. Dick doesn’t stir and Tim doesn’t say anything else, and he knows, somehow, that he should let this go. Tim’s too still to be comfortable. He doesn’t want to hear this, not today, maybe not at all.But then again, he’s never been one to hide from bad news.“How.”For a minute, he thinks he won’t get an answer. But then, “We killed him.”





	1. Take Me Home and Make This Right

**Author's Note:**

> This is so far off of what actually happens that it’s not even funny, but maybe there can be at least one world that goes…kind of…better. (Though to be fair, Gaslights!Jason has it easier than a lot of his counterparts due to an existing pre-death support network, avengement, and lack of perceived replacement. So, really, despite everything, he’ll be okay when he does finally get back to Gotham in the future.)
> 
> In light of DC's 'everything is awful HAHA!' I raise you one 'fuck you DC everything is sunshine'.

In another world, Jason scrambles back onto the grass before the carriage clips him. The passengers-married couple, slightly tipsy, on their way home from a party-are very apologetic.

He guilts them into giving him a ride. Not to Wayne Manor, he’s not that dumb. He knows what he looks like-sketchy and likely to be a murderer or something. But he gets them to drop him not far from their own residence in midtown, and from there it’s only a street south to Penguin’s townhouse.

Gotham’s too loud tonight, too bright and too busy, and Jason honestly isn’t sure if it was always like this or if it’s…how long has he…

Penguin’s house is dark and for a second he panics-what if no one’s home, what’ll he do then, it’s too far of a walk-but he forces a ragged breath into his lungs and knocks.

Nothing happens. His knees threaten to drop him and he wills them to lock, to keep him standing for a few more minutes. He’s freezing and his hands really hurt, and if he’s going to be honest, he doesn’t…he doesn’t feel right. He’s too aware of his body, that things he knows were broken

**Shattered collarbone dislocated hip that fucking harpoon**

are not. The only sign, as far as he knows, of what happened is the. The. On his chest. **That.** Everything else is fine, like nothing ever happened. He doesn’t understand, and right now he doesn’t want to try. He wants to go **home**.

A light appears upstairs.

**Thank you.**

Olga opens the door a minute later, and he catches a snippet of horrified Russian before she slaps him hard enough to send him staggering back.

Oh, no.

“Olga-”

She keeps coming and he spots the gleam of a meat cleaver seconds before it strikes the bricks near his head.

“Olga, please-”

“What’s going on?”

Dove’s voice, tired and more than a little annoyed. Jason scrambles back into the beam of light streaming into the road, but Olga’s faster than he remembers and she grabs his arm tight enough to bruise.

“Got you.” Uh-oh. This is bad. This is terrible, this was not how things were supposed to go- “Who do you think you are-”

“Olga, what-oh, my God.”

He’s dragged inside. The door slams behind him and right about now, he starts really, really sympathizing with Penguin’s regular mooks.

Olga might be furious-the grip on his arm says so-but Dove’s staring at him like she’s seen a ghost. Which, to be fair…

“What on God’s green earth…”

“What are you?” Olga gives him a shake hard enough to rattle his teeth. Water and mud

**Call it what it is s’grave-dirt**

flies off him and hits the rug. The women don’t seem to notice.

“Are you another Karlo*, hm?” Another angry shake. “Or something else? What are you?”

“S’me,” he rasps, wonders when his throat started to hurt like this. “S’Jason. I swear, I don’t know what happened-”

“Jason is dead,” Olga snarls. “How dare you put him on and come here-”

“Ivy,” Dove whispers. “Ivy came back. And. And Gold, d’you remember, last autumn…”

Yes! Yes. See, there’s a…a precedent, please…

“Wrong.” Olga looks him up and down. “They came back wrong and you know it.”

“I didn’t,” he insists, because he’s pretty sure he didn’t. He doesn’t…he feels all right. No vines writhing in his skin or anything, just worms in his throat and insects in his chest and that goddamn scar- “I didn’t, I swear, I didn’t, please-” Olga looks from her cleaver to his skull and he **panics** because she’s going to kill him, he knows she is and he just wants to go **home**. “Olga-”

She shakes him again before forcing him back against the wall.

“What do we do with it?”

Dove squeezes her eyes shut and turns around, murmurs, “Wine cellar, Mister Cobblepot can…I don’t know, he’ll probably want to see.”

Nononononono it’s dark down there and cold and damp and **he can’t do this again.**

But Olga’s already yanking him back towards her, hard enough to make him stumble, and beginning to tow him towards the innocuous wooden door. God, no, **please** -

“ _Maman,_ ” he begs, unsure if he’s even allowed the use of that nickname anymore, “ _Maman,_ please, I **swear** I’m not **-** ”

The cleaver just…drops, bounces under the hall table. Olga lets go of him, too, peels her fingers off his jacket one by one. Now that he’s not being half-held upright, he feels about to collapse-his legs are shaking and everything’s so vivid. He can hear his pulse in his ears and it’s so foreign. It shouldn’t… **he** shouldn’t…

Dove turns back around, looking like she wants to be sick.

“What did you say?” He doesn’t know the correct answer. His head hurts and he’s **tired** and the…the **thing** on his chest feels like it’s suffocating him. “That’s not…Olga-”

Olga grips his arm again, gentler this time, and tugs him over under the lamplight before pulling his head back and looking at his eyes. The light hurts but he doesn’t dare try to pull away from her.

“Not Karlo,” she murmurs. He’s never heard her sound this uncertain, not even when Dick had fallen through the ice when they were little. “I don’t understand…”

Neither does he and he’s **sorry** , he’s so sorry…

He doesn’t realize that his trouble breathing is caused by hiccupping, half-swallowed sobs until Dove’s standing in front of him, shaking fingers brushing tears off his cheek.

 _“Petit rouge?”_ she breathes. He nods. “Oh God-”

“M’sorry, I just didn’t know what to do, I woke up-”

He’s pulled into a hug, squeezed and folded down like he’s ten again.

“No, no, no, sweetheart, don’t-” Dove swallows and grips a handful of his jacket. “Don’t be sorry, Jay, **God** , don’t be sorry.”

A heavy hand comes down on his head, moving purposefully through his hair and dislodging clumps of mud and who-knows-what-else. He’s vaguely aware of Olga saying something, or maybe just trying to, but all he picks up is alarm (that’s funny, she’s never…nothing rattles her, why…?), no words.

His hands hurt. They’ve been throbbing for a while now, but now that he’s **safe** , and going to be all right, they’re really making themselves known. So, for that matter, is the…the autopsy…

“Jason-!”

And the world falls down.

* * *

He wakes in a bed, in clean clothes and with bandages running from his fingers to his elbows. He’s warm for what feels like the first time in…in a long time,

**How long was I gone?**

and his hair’s damp. What…when…

He thinks he remembers Olga pulling splinters out of his hands before carrying him upstairs, but he can’t be sure. He can’t be sure of anything. For all he knows, this is…some sorta afterlife, or maybe not even that, maybe s’just…maybe he’s dying and his mind’s trying to soothe itself or maybe-

“Jay? Sweetheart?” He lets his head drop to the side to look at Dove. “ _There_ you are…think you can take a drink?”

He nods, or thinks he does, and pulls himself upright, slumps against the headboard. He couldn’t hold the glass if he tried and she doesn’t try to make him, just tilts it against his lips. The water goes down easy. Wakes him up a little more.

“Dick ‘n Tim’ll be here soon,” she says, and he’s confused because what about Bruce ‘n Selina ‘n Alfred? Aren’t they still…s’B outta town or somethin’? “And Penguin sent someone out to Wayne Manor, but in this rain it might take them a bit to get there.”

That doesn’t explain anything.

“How long was I…” He can’t say it. He wants to, it’s just that his tongue seizes up and won’t. Dove sets the glass down, though, and presses on his shoulders until he goes back down.

“Six months,” she says roughly. “It’s October ninth. Or. Or maybe tenth, now, I don’t know the time.”

He hasn’t missed Christmas? Dumb as it is, he’s ridiculously happy-Alfred had said he could have the good eggnog this year.

“Tha’s it?”

“That’s it.”

He wonders where Olga’s gone, and if Penguin knows, and if Dove will tell him why Dick and Tim aren’t with Bruce and Selina. At least, he wonders for a few minutes, before he dozes off on accident. Next thing he knows, he’s alone and there’s voices in the hallway.

“That’s not possible-”

“He’s gotta be like Gold-”

“I wouldn’t have told you if it wasn’t true.”

“But he was-”

“I _know_ that. But it is him, I promise. It’s not…it’s not like the others, it really is Jason. Now go on. Just be careful with him.”

And then the door opens.

It’s an effort to get his eyes to stay open, but he manages all the same. Dick and Tim are here, and they, wow, they look awful, like they’ve been out all night. They’re not…not in uniform, at least, but still…

Why weren’t they with Bruce?

He wets his lips and rasps, “Hey.”

 _“Jason,”_ Dick breathes. “Jay, oh, my God-”

Tim doesn’t say anything. Jason blinks and the kid’s **on** him, arms around his neck and face buried in his chest, mumbling, “M’sorry m’sorry m’sorry Jay I didn’t mean it I **didn’t-** ”

He doesn’t remember…what the hell is Tim going on about? Had they argued…before…or something?

Later. He’ll ask later. It doesn’t matter, whatever it is, his little brother’s all right and that’s the important thing here.

He hugs him back, which is harder than he’d expected with his arms bound up, and buries his face in his hair.

“I gotcha, Timmy,” he breathes. “S’all right. S. S’gonna be all right.”

Isn’t it?

Tim moves so his bony-ass knees are tucked uncomfortably against Jason’s side. Dick’s still hovering in the doorway, eyes wide, and all Jason can think is, **please don’t faint, I’m too trapped to catch you.**

“Dickie?” And he hasn’t…he thinks he remembers using that childish nickname **Then** , but…not for a long time before that. S’just…s’just that he’s confused and wrung out and he wants his big brother to fix it like he used to.

Dick makes a sort of a sob and comes closer. He stops next to the bed and reaches out, like Dove did earlier, until his fingers brush against Jason’s head.

“Jay?” He sounds awful. “S’that…you’re not…”

He nods, throat suddenly thick, and pulls an arm off of Tim’s shoulder to make a weak swipe for Dick’s hand. Dick, thankfully, gets it and sits down-and then promptly lays on him and Tim both. Ow.

Tim moves so he’s no longer the middle of the sandwich. Jason closes his eyes and realizes that he has no idea whose tears are dripping onto his neck. **Now** he’s warm, and the knot of limbs around him is so different from…from when he woke up earlier that there’s no way he can be anything other than **alive**. That, and he can feel his pulse in his hands. That helps. Hurts, but helps.

“What happened?” Tim finally spits out, and he decides here and now that they don’t need to know everything.

“I don’t remember,” he says, pretends he doesn’t feel Dick’s hand trembling against the scar on his chest. “I woke up and then I was here.”

**Splinters and worms and God please don’t let me die down here-!**

No. They don’t need to know.

He tries to pet Tim’s head-he’s more conveniently located-and ends up sort of bludgeoning his hair with his club of a hand. Somebody (Olga?) was enthusiastic.

He coughs, sudden and unexpected, and Dick scrambles off him, swats Tim off, and pulls him upright.

“Jason-”

Coughing hurts and he can’t stop. Tim scarpers off somewhere, leaving Dick to move so that Jason’s back is against his chest.

“Breathe with me,” he says, like he used to say when they were kids and Jason’d had a nightmare. “C’mon, Jay-bird…”

He **can’t** breathe, that’s what happens when you cough. He’s still struggling for air, tasting dirt and corpses on his tongue, when Dove reappears with a glass of water.

“All right, baby, all right, come on…”

His head’s tipped up and water’s coaxed down his throat, quieting the coughs and washing the dead taste away. He’s still sputtering, a little, when Dick’s hand all but smacks against his cheek.

“He feel warm to you?”

Dove frowns and kisses his forehead.

“Maybe…”

“M’fine,” he insists, and it’s a blatant lie and he knows they know it, but still.

He is ignored.

“Tim, go ask Olga for the thermometer.” He doesn’t hear him go, but he must. “All right, honey, lift your head, c’mon…”

Huh…?

He does what he’s told. Dove feels around his neck and for a second it feels as though she’s working a clump of dirt up out of his throat. Nothing comes, though, and he lets his head drop back against Dick’s shoulder.

“All right…thank you, Tim.” Tim and Olga are both here now-Tim on the bed and Olga behind Dove. The thermometer slips between his lips. “Two minutes, don’t talk.”

Mm.

He’s tired and it’s an effort to hold it in place. But he manages, and Dove finally takes it back, looks at it, and shrugs.

“You’re fine.” Well. Fine for a walking corpse, anyway. “Just warming up from…being out in the rain.”

From digging his way out of a coffin, but there’s no reason to argue semantics. He was outside, that’s enough.

Dick lets him go back down, and he’s barely gotten comfortable again before he nods back off.

He’s aware of hushed voices over him, of fingers resting against his throat from time to time and of palms against his head. But he’s not disturbed, not really, until a hesitant hand perches on his shoulder and a deep voice whispers, “Jason?”

**Bruce.**

It’s not Batman’s voice. Hell, if Jason’s going to be honest, he’s never heard Bruce sound like this, unsure and… **emotional**. It sounds like he’s going to start crying.

As much as he doesn’t want to see that, ever-ever-ever, he pulls his eyes open. The room’s dimmer, now, and Bruce is more of a big blur than anything.

“Da?”

The hand on his shoulder trembles, thumb pressing against the top of the scar there, before going to Jason’s head. It stays there, fingers combing through a section of his bangs, for a few minutes. He’s just starting to wonder what’s going on when he’s tugged upright and squeezed.

Bruce **is** crying-there’s water hitting the top of his head. This is new and frightening territory and he doesn’t like it.

But he’ll take the hug. Bruce-hugs are a strange and wonderous thing-they should be confining, with how big he is, but instead they’re warm and oddly squishy. And right now, more than ever, even more than that time Richardson nearly disemboweled him, he wants the security. Death is going to have to go through Batman to get to him, and that’s never a smart move. He’s not…he’s not going to close his eyes and not wake up.

He can’t hug him back-his arms are trapped-but he can press his head against his chest and just breathe.

“Oh, God, Jay,” Bruce is saying, voice muffled because his face is pressed against Jason’s hair, “Oh, God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Why? Last Jason knew, he wasn’t the one laughing a-and…and-

**“I feel like a fox hunt, boys! Run, run, little Todd**, go on! RUN!”**

He doesn’t realize that he’s shaking until Bruce practically turns himself into a human straitjacket, hands tense against his back. He’s all right. He’s all right, J- **he’s** not here, everything’s all right.

“Da?” he mumbles, tapping a hand against Bruce’s thigh. “C’n we go home?”

He’s not sure how, but Bruce somehow manages to hug him tighter.

“Yes.”

THE END

 

*Basil Karlo-Clayface. Gaslights!Clayface can be identified by a faint, but noticeable, ‘muddy’ hue to the eyes. Not brown, but off. _Very_ easy to miss unless you’ve got good lighting and know what to look for.

**Tod: a male fox. Much to Joker’s glee, Jason is a redhead on top of it. You bet your buns the clown had a field day.


	2. Bad Dreams Melt Away

Jason manages to stay awake for the ride home, and he’s sorta conscious when Bruce carries him upstairs and puts him in his own bed, but after that? Resurrections are exhausting, apparently, because he sleeps like the-er, like a rock.

He wakes up who-knows-how-many hours later, when the sun screaming high in the sky finally slips in through a crack in the drapes. He’s not alone-Tim’s curled up in his arms again and Dick and Bruce are crammed into the settee. Bruce, at least, is hunkered down like a hibernating bear, but Dick’s both half-in his lap and half-off the settee itself, legs flung around the ottoman. Why can’t he ever sit properly…circus freak…

He yawns and wishes Tim would get his bones out of his ribs. The kid’s crammed against him so tightly he honestly can’t tell if those are elbows or knees or shoulder blades or what, but they’re pokey and uncomfortable.

Then again, he’d much rather suffer bones-to-the-ribs than he would a harpoon-through-the-lung, so, actually, never mind. Tim can stay.

Selina and Alfred are out of town, apparently. He thinks something must have happened when he…left…but he was too out of it to push last night. (It **was** last night, wasn’t it? He hasn’t slept for a week or something?)

He winds his arms a little tighter around Tim’s shoulders and wonders if he can go back to sleep. He thinks he wants to. But then again, he could be a little hungry. He’s just not sure.

Downstairs, the door flies open and there’s **running**. The noise jerks Bruce and Dick awake, resulting in them smacking their heads together and flailing. Tim squirms and mutters something about being sucked into a freak sinkhole before burying his face in Jason’s neck and making himself as heavy as possible. What-

His bedroom door opens with enough force to slam it into the wall and then everything’s just. Still.

Selina and Alfred hover in the hallway for a minute, maybe two, before Alfred whispers, _“Master Jason.”_

He thought Bruce being upset was bad? He didn’t know how good he had it. Alfred’s eyes are very, very shiny and his mustache is quivering.

“Hi, Alfie.”

He’s not sure if that was the right thing to say or not. The mustache does not stop quivering, but Alfred comes over and…sort of falls…into the chair by his bed. This is terrifying. Alfred doesn’t…he is the rock. For a while there, in the beginning, Jason hadn’t been sure he wasn’t some sort of lifelike steam-powered machine.

He aims for normalcy.

“C’n I have a few days to catch up on our book before we talk about it?”

Tim moves. Alfred leans over and gathers Jason up, one hand against his back and the other in his hair. He smells the same as he ever did, that peculiar blend of black tea and lavender and library.

Hugging Alfred has always been a vaguely frightening experience. Not because he’s not free with them; on the contrary, despite the stuffiness and the primness and everything, he’s a very affectionate person. S’just. There’s always some underlying terror of ‘don’t mess up his suit’ and ‘don’t break him, he’s old’. But now? He’s shakier than Alfred’s ever been and he’s happy to latch onto him and never let go.

The bed dips down and a hesitant hand rests between his shoulder blades.

“Jason?” Selina whispers. “Good God-how-”

Maybe- **maybe** -one day he’ll tell Bruce. But **only** Bruce, and only if he swears on his parents’ graves **and** on Jason’s to keep his mouth shut. But right now? He doesn’t wanna talk about it and it’ll be easier for everyone if they think he doesn’t remember and don’t…they can’t make it better. Not that. He doesn’t want them to try.

“I don’t remember,” he says, wishes his voice wouldn’t catch. “I don’t remember, I-I just woke up a-an’ Dove said. Said Bruce was coming.”

He doesn’t have to look to know that Dick and Tim are shooting Bruce the Shut-the-Hell-Up looks. That’s all right.

At some point, Selina pulls him away from Alfred, who murmurs something about hot soup. He ducks his head against her neck and listens to the pulse there.

**No more going through.**

Where’d that come from?

Never mind. Doesn’t matter. He’s home and safe and everyone…they didn’t…they still want him.

“Oh, _Jason_ ,” Selina breathes, nails scratching lightly against the nape of his neck. “Okay, kitten, okay…good God, look at you-”

One hand brushes against the bandages on his arm and follows them downwards. He wonders, a bit, if she’ll say something-nobody else has-but she doesn’t, just curls her fingers around his.

“Look at you…” Selina whispers again. Her other hand combs through his bangs (hadn’t Bruce…? Why’s everyone suddenly…?) “Look at you, Jay-bird, oh, my God…”

Warm tears hit his head and some part of him panics because Selina never cries. Well. When she an’ Bruce got married, she did, but other than that? Her eyes are drier than stone.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and she manages, somehow, to hold him tighter. There’s a few aborted words, one or two shaky inhales, and then she gives up and starts sobbing into his hair.

* * *

He wrangles a few minutes to just **breathe** after getting some soup down. Said he wanted a bath. Considered making a ‘smell like death’ joke and thought better of it.

Even though it was funny.

Now that the door’s shut and locked behind him, he can take a look at himself for the first time since…since.

It’s a shock. The boy in the mirror has old man’s eyes, like the ones you see in people that remember the War. His face is scraped up a bit, but…but that’s not what catches his attention, not really.

The section of his bangs, the bit everyone’s been fussing with, it’s…it’s gone white. It feels the same as the rest of his hair, it’s not that, it’s just…there’s not even a hint that it should be red.

Stripping out of his shirt is worse. The…the scar from…the ‘Y’…he can **see** , in some places, where the hand holding the needle was shaking. It juts up from the rest of his skin, raw an’ red an’ impossible to ignore, and it’s because of it that he nearly misses the **other** scar, above his right lung.

That one’s smaller, at least in comparison. It’s mostly round, barring the line popping out from one side-

_Everything hurts, please, please-_

_Tears mix with blood and sweat and that **face** looms over him, lips stretched wide over yellow teeth, and then there’s piercing pressure against his ribs, followed by the scrape of metal against bone before they crack and give and **God-**_

He sucks in a gasp, realizes that he’s pressed his hand against his chest like Mama used to.

The eyes in the mirror look impossibly older, now. He can’t keep eye contact with his reflection and ends up sliding into the copper tub without another look.

Dick and Tim are still in his room when he finally emerges, hair still wet and clothes loose enough to keep from brushing against the scars too much. The others are gone, and the door is closed.

“Need me to redo your hands?” Dick asks. Jason glances at them. They’re raw and swollen, but the water had helped.

“In a little bit. They need to breathe.”

The bath wore him out. He’s trembling and weak like he was when he was sick last January, and crawling back under the covers is a welcome relief.

Lying on his back brings to mind hard wood and falling bugs, but lying on his stomach makes the scars that much more noticeable, so his side it is. He’s barely gotten comfortable before Dick’s vaulted over him to wrap around him like a monkey and Tim squirms up against his chest like a little kid.

Well. Um.

Right, then.

Dick’s breathing evens out first, settles into soft puffs against the back of his neck, and when Jason reaches back to poke him, he doesn’t so much as tense against the fingers dancing against that ticklish spot on his ribs.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Tim mumbles. “It’s not a hallucination, but…it’s impossible.”

What, so he’s supposed to know the secrets of Life now? Gee, talk about unreasonable expectations.

“I dunno, Timmy.” He hangs his hands off the bed, where they’ll be safe from being rolled on, and looks at his bookshelf. It’s dust-free, but it’s…it’s gotten that look that furniture gets when its owner’s been away for a long time. Like it went to sleep. “Somethin’ in the soil, I guess.”

Tim makes an irritated noise in the back of his throat and presses his head against Jason’s ribs, hands creeping up to latch onto his shirt. One finger presses lightly against the

**Scalpel slices neat as you please to peel the skin back off the bone**

against That, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, he says something else.

“He’s dead.”

The weight of that **He** sucks the air out of the room, leaving Jason feeling like he’s taken a boot to the chest. Dick doesn’t stir and Tim doesn’t say anything else, and he knows, somehow, that he should let this go. Tim’s too still to be comfortable. He doesn’t want to hear this, not today, maybe not at all.

But then again, he’s never been one to hide from bad news.

“How.”

For a minute, he thinks he won’t get an answer. But then, “We killed him.”

**WHAT.**

“Tim-”

“We tracked him down, a-and. And we brought him down ta Old Gotham. So the noise wouldn’t. You know. And. And Dick, he-I’ve never, not even on the job, he-” He swallows, fingers trembling, and Jason doesn’t want to hear any more. “He had a crowbar, the bastard wasn’t going to move again and he just kept **hitting-** ”

That might be new to Tim, but Jason’s seen Dick that angry once before. Only the once, when they were kids. Some rich brat, one’a the ones that gives their nanny the slip to explore the slums for ‘fun’, had said somethin’ about his parents, and while Jason had been all for teaching the brat some manners, Dickie…Dickie had probably scarred him for life. He’d probably never scarpered out the back ever again, which, really, s’for the best.

Tim’s still babbling, voice muffled and lips scarcely moving-or moving too fast, maybe. He can’t tell.

“-and he wouldn’t stop laughing, Jay, he wouldn’t. Stop. Laughing.”

“S’all right, Timmy,” he says faintly, because what else is there to say? He can still hear the giggling, muffled as it is, feel the clown’s weight as he sprawled over him to work the harpoon the rest of the way through-

**“Flop, flop, flop, little fish!”**

Tim shakes his head.

“He was watching me. The whole time I…we had saws. A-and when Dick stepped back, when he wasn’t moving anymore…we couldn’t take any chances, and. And I started sawing and he **wouldn’t shut up-** ”

He chokes and his arms come up to wind around Jason’s neck so he can cling harder, like he used to do when they were little and he’d had nightmares. He’s crying now, that unsettling silent-sob that he does, and Jason’s…stunned. Spooked. Angry, a little, at Bruce for not stopping them.

No. No, he’s really not that angry at Bruce. He would’ve…if it had been Tim, or Dick, he would’ve hunted the bastard down and done the same thing. It’s incredibly easy to avoid Batman if you know what you’re doing.

“S’okay, Tim,” he breathes. “S’okay. He’s.” He swallows, blinks back memories of bulbous, watery eyes and too-long teeth. “He’s stopped.”

“M’sorry, Jay,” Tim’s whispering. “M’sorry, m’sorry-”

Dick shifts, almost imperceptibly, and one hand comes up to flop heavily down on Tim’s head. Tim doesn’t react to it.

Twenty minutes later, he’s still and Jason’s neck is sticky and wet and…yeah. This is incredibly uncomfortable. But he doesn’t have it in him to move, either, and he settles for trying to wipe everything off on Tim’s hair. Behind him, Dick chuckles. It’s a broken sound, one that Jason would happily never hear again.

“He didn’t hurt you?” he asks, doesn’t know why. Clearly they’re both fine. Dick’s other hand pats his stomach-getting untangled from everybody is going to be a nightmare-and he squirms up so his head’s over Jason’s. Jason, for a minute, remembers Dick being able to pick him up. It hadn’t been for long, but there was a time, when they first met, that his clingy older brother could carry him around like a grumpy teddy bear.

He kind of misses being a grumpy teddy bear.*

“We surprised him,” Dick explains. “I think he was expecting Bruce, and…well.”

Well, indeed. He twists enough to roll onto his back, somehow not disturbing Tim, and tucks his head under Dick’s neck.

“T’anks, Dickie.”

He gets a kiss to the head for his troubles, followed by a, “I’m sorry, Jay.”

“For what?”

“I should’ve kept a better eye on you.” Um. “I’m older, s’my job to look after you an’ Tim, an’ I didn’t-”

“Shut up.” He elbows him in the stomach. Absolutely nothing happens. “I’m not a baby, it’s not your job to make sure I don’t get snatched off the street.”

“Clearly Bruce can’t be trusted to do it,” is the dark reply, and Jason suspects he’s just found out why Bruce wasn’t with them last night. He does not want to go down that road. Not right now. There’s only so much information he can handle.

“It’s nobody’s fault but J-” He can’t say it. He wants to, he just…the word won’t come. “But his.”

Tellingly, he doesn’t get an answer. Just a squeeze.

He lets this go, too. He’s too tired for this. And that’s fine. It’s better, anyway, to make sure his hands are still and pulled up against his stomach, where they’re safe and out of the way, and to close his eyes, and just…just breathe.

The door opens and somebody comes in. Selina, as it turns out-her hand’s light on his head, and she does that thing with her thumb that reminds him of petting cats. Feels nice. Reminds him, a little bit, of Mama, before she got sick.

He wonders, suddenly, if. If he saw her, when he was…before he…

Between Tim’s snuffly breaths, Selina’s hand, and Dick’s warmth, it really isn’t his fault that he starts falling back asleep. It’s not as though he’s fighting it, anyway. Maybe…maybe he can remember f’he saw Mama, while he was gone.

He hopes he did.

THE END

 

 

 

 

*Jason is still a grumpy teddy bear. Just. A jumbo-sized one from Costco.


End file.
